Placing Transborder Sovereignty: Making Race, Indigeneity, and Reservation Enterprise on the US-Mexico Border

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

American Studies

First Advisor

Martinez HoSang, Daniel

Abstract

This dissertation interrogates Indigenous sovereignty, racial formation, and placemaking through a relational framework that emphasizes the dynamic ways Kumeyaay communities have navigated state-imposed racial categories across the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Combining interdisciplinary methods from oral history, geography, and ethnography, the project develops the concept of relational reservation racialization to illuminate how racial categories— “Mexican,” “Indian,” and “Mission Indian”—have been mobilized, contested, and redefined by Kumeyaay peoples within colonial and state frameworks. I argue that Kumeyaay sovereignty is not a fixed legal status or singular political achievement but an ongoing process of assertion, negotiation, and adaptation within the structures of settler governance. Drawing on extensive archival research, oral-history interviews, and spatial analysis, this study traces Kumeyaay strategies from the Spanish colonial era to contemporary neoliberal restructuring. Chapter One historicizes racial categories imposed under Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. governance, illustrating Kumeyaay resistance to erasure and strategic negotiation of legal recognition. Chapter Two examines the traumatic displacement from Capitan Grande in the 1930s, reconstructing how displaced families formed resilient communities at Viejas and Barona reservations. Chapters Three and Four analyze the emergence of tribal gaming amid intensified border militarization, revealing casinos as sites of both economic sovereignty and state surveillance and regulation. Chapter Five presents comparative ethnographies of Kumeyaay casinos, exploring how cultural commodification, through built environments, labor systems, and marketing strategies, engages Latinx consumer markets and shapes transborder cultural identities and economic interactions. Chapter Six investigates educational sovereignty through tribally controlled curricula and homeschooling refusals at the Viejas Community Services Department and Kumeyaay Community College, highlighting pedagogical autonomy as a vital form of Indigenous epistemological resistance and cultural affirmation. This dissertation advances three key scholarly interventions. First, it reframes sovereignty not merely as a legal status but as a lived, relational practice enacted through memory, affect, and cultural production. This contributes to debates in racial capitalism and settler colonial studies. Second, it offers the first book-length relational study of Kumeyaay sovereignty, situating Indigenous placemaking within a multiracial, transborder context that expands comparative approaches in Borderlands Studies. Third, it models decolonial, community-based research methods that address power asymmetries between academic institutions and tribal communities, advancing collaborative scholarship in American Studies and Indigenous Studies. Methodologically, the dissertation integrates multi-sited archival research—including San Diego County archives, the National Archives Southwest Region, and Spanish-language collections in Baja California—with GIS spatial analysis and a collaborative oral history practice rooted in tribal-approved consent protocols, digital co-curation, and participatory community-based research. I emphasize decolonial Indigenous methodologies and prioritize collaborative practices that honor Kumeyaay sovereignty and ethical reciprocity. While tribal gaming, border task forces, and educational initiatives have opened new pathways for self-determination, these projects remain shaped by legal, economic, and affective constraints that continue to structure Indigenous governance in the 21st century. Ultimately, this research advocates for decolonial scholarly approaches that empower Indigenous communities through the co-production and stewardship of their historical narratives and futures.

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